HOW DO YA LIKE THAT, BIG APPLE?

Perhaps you heard the exciting news: Online travel site TripAdvisor, conducted a survey of restaurants that serve pizza in order to record the cities that offer the best.

And which city came out on top?

San Diego!

What makes that such fabulous news, other than the obvious, is that it was a welcome coup in my ongoing feud with my friends back East.

Ever since I left the Big Apple, we’ve had this battle about which city is preferable. Great pizza was always a signature plum, but in the survey, New York came in fourth.

I wasn’t going to let an opportunity like that pass, so I called my chief adversary, my friend Stan from Brooklyn.

“Yeah, I hoid,” Stan muttered. “Fuggedaboutit!”

But I knew when I had a winner, so I persisted: “Previously, we were number 1 in climate, now we’re number 1 in pizza.”

“It’s just one tiny grain of sand,” Stan droned, “compared to da mountain of advantages we got here of which you don’t got nuttin like over dere.”

“What are you referring to?”

“Cultcha! Like Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Museum of Modern Art, and Da Guggenherm.”

“Have you ever been to any of those places?”

“Dat has nuttin to do wit it. We got ’em. Dat’s all dat counts.”

“We happen to have some very sophisticated venues of our own.”

“Oh yeah? Do you have Da Metropolitan Opera like for instance?”

“Have you ever been to The Met?”

“Are you kiddin me? I got season tickets.”

“You have season tickets to the Metropolitan Opera?”

“Who said anyting about opera? I’m talkin about da Mets.”

“San Diego happens to have some very sophisticated cultural venues, including opera, the symphony, and fabulous plays.”

“Plays? You bring up plays when we got Broadway?”

“Have you ever been to a Broadway show?”

“‘Damn Yankees’ in 1964.”

“Well, we happen to have The Old Globe. It’s a famous theater in one of the most renowned parks anywhere, Balboa Park.”

“Don’t talk to me about parks when we got Central Park.”

“Have you ever been there?”

“Too many muggings.”

“Is that all you got?”

“I can name a million places. We got da New York Public Library, as for example, one of da best and da biggest on da planet.”

“Have you ever been there?”

“I got a computer. What century are you livin in?”

“What’s the point of having all those places if you never go to them?”

“It ain’t a matter of goin. It’s a matter of havin, and we have ’em. Dat’s what makes dis da greatest city in da woild.”

“But what good is having those things if you don’t take advantage of them? Don’t you ever want to get out? Get some fresh air, go to a nice restaurant? What about taking in a movie, perhaps at one of those historic movie houses you’re always bragging about?”